“I’ve heard that she is to be crowned at a later date,” his brother said. “The King seems to think that Becket won’t be able to resist the opportunity to officiate and that it’ll bring him to heel.”
“I’ve heard that too,” William said neutrally. The King wanted to push the argument with Becket aside like detritus into a midden pit. William had the notion that King Henry’s midden pit was already overflowing, and that a cautious man would do well to watch his boots and know when to leap.
“York performed the first ceremony; that will always stand, no matter what Becket and Canterbury do.”
William murmured agreement and looked towards the dais. King Henry had taken a flagon and napkin from a passing attendant. His face full of pride, a smile on his lips, he proceeded to fill the cup of his newly crowned heir. “It is a great and sacred occasion when a king is crowned!” he announced in ringing tones for everyone to hear. “I want all gathered here to mark this auspicious day for the house of Anjou and for my son!”
His words provoked roars of approbation from the gathering. Lacking cups in which to toast the speech, William and his brother raised their arms in the air and shouted the salute. Henry turned to his heir. His voice remained loud to include the company and it was bright with jest. “Few of you will ever have seen one king wait upon another, but you witness it now.”
A dutiful chuckle circulated around the trestles. Graceful as a young stag, Prince Henry stood to acknowledge his father’s words and lifted his cup. His crown gleamed at his brow: a wide gold band pronged with fleurs-de-lis and set with sapphires, rubies, and pearls. “Indeed it is”—he acknowledged his father with a bow and a quicksilver smile—“but less unusual to see the son of a count wait upon the son of a king.” The riposte might have been amusing in the private chamber but in the great hall it caused a collective gasp.
The good humour left his father’s face, which slowly reddened—always a sign of impending rage, but on this occasion he held it in check and retained his smile, even if it was more a baring of teeth than the genuine expression. “Clever,” he half snarled, wagging his forefinger, “very clever, boy. Now all you need is the wisdom to go with your wit.” There was emphasis on the word “boy.”
William exhaled softly through his teeth, thinking that young Henry was fortunate not to have had that cup of wine dashed in his face. “Jesu,” he muttered softly to his brother, “if we had spoken to our own father thus, he’d have whipped our backside to the bone.”
“Yes, but none of us would have offered him such disrespect in the first place,” Henry Marshal said. He looked at William. “Are you certain that it’s a good idea to seek your fortune in his service?”
William heaved a sigh. “It’s like today’s coronation, brother,” he said. “We are stuck with it for better or for worse.” Unconsciously he squared his shoulders as if bracing to meet a foe in battle. The Prince’s crass comment had swept out from the dais and was spreading towards the far end of the hall with the speed of rampant bindweed through a field, as could be attested by the uneasy laughter and whispered conversation. Somewhere, he knew, Walter Map and his ilk would be making notes and writing it down for posterity, God help everyone.
Eight
Southampton, November 1172
Rhys ap Madoc, a mercenary archer from Gwent, drew the string of his longbow back to the ear, marking a point of reference with his knuckle to the last molar in his upper jaw, his gaze never wavering from the target of stuffed straw. When he loosed the arrow, it flew as straight as a saint’s word to God into the target centre. Before William could draw breath to speak, a second arrow was winging to split the first. The archer swore at the damage done to the flight, but there was a satisfied gleam in his dark brown eyes.
“You’ll do.” William strove to sound nonchalant, as if he saw such talent every day. He was actually in search of a new groom, but he wasn’t going to cavil if that groom also happened to be deadly with a bow and a handy soldier into the bargain. “Go and find yourself a billet in the guardroom for now. Tell Master Ailward that I sent you.”
“Yes, sir.” The man touched the tip of his greasy leather cap and would have departed, had not William called him back, for his curiosity had been whetted. “You say you were with Richard de Clare of Striguil?” William thought of the red-haired lord to whom he had briefly spoken in the Southwark bathhouse two years ago. De Clare had made good on his promise; had carved his fortune out of the green Irish turf and taken to wife Aoife, daughter of Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster.
“Yes, sir, I was, but my wife’s Norman and she was homesick. She’s not one to complain but I could tell she was miserable, and a man doesn’t need misery at his hearth. Besides, I’m not a man to baulk at a fight, but there was never any respite. I knew sooner or later I’d wind up dead in a bog or bleaching my bones on some riverbank.”
“And what makes you think that you won’t bleach your bones in my service?” William asked with a grim smile.
The Welshman gave a philosophical shrug. “I might do that, sir, but I reckon there’s more chance of surviving in your retinue long enough to enjoy my married state.”
William dismissed Rhys and watched him jog towards the guardroom. He wished Richard de Clare well of his marriage to the Princess Aoife. Men who had not been to Ireland listened to tales of its green-grey mistiness, its savage bearded chieftains, its place at the edge of the world and shuddered into their wine. William, though, had always felt drawn towards the country by his natural sense of adventure. Had he been a penniless younger son without prospects, he might have accepted a taste of life in de Clare’s service—and perhaps an Irish wife. From what he had heard, de Clare had already had a child out of Princess Aoife, a daughter, and the lady was breeding again.
His smile was ironic as he thought of what the archer had said about living a strife-torn life in Ireland. William’s existence might not be as fraught with daily danger, but that did not mean it was peaceful. Then again, such storms as beset Prince Henry’s household would probably pass over the head of a groom.
As William entered Southampton Castle’s great hall, Adam, one of the clerks, scuttled past him, pieces of a broken wax tablet in his hand. The look he cast at William glittered with venom. Glancing back at him in speculation, William continued into the room. Plainly spoiling for a fight, the Young King was pacing the rush-strewn floor, his grey eyes stormy and his chin, with its new sprouting of beard, belligerent. His fourteen-year-old wife was sitting over her needlework frame but she wasn’t sewing and her lips were pressed firmly together. She was a queen now, having finally been given her own coronation three months ago at Winchester: nowhere near as grand as her husband’s, but it served its purpose, which was to mollify her father.
“Is there trouble, my lord?” William enquired. He noticed that a trestle had been set up to one side of the room. The London merchant Richard FitzReinier, who supplied many of the Prince’s requirements, was rolling up assorted bolts of fine cloth, aided by a nervous-looking assistant.
“Not of my making,” Henry snapped.
William wandered over to the mercer’s trestle, noting that the fabrics were mostly wool, softly teased and napped, and in muted jewel colours—the most expensive sort. There was some silk too, including a small bolt of the staggeringly costly imperial purple. FitzReinier flicked William a swift look from under his brows and gave an infinitesimal shake of his head.
“My father gives me a crown like tossing a bauble to a little child, and expects it to be enough,” Henry snapped. He picked up the inkhorn that the clerk had left behind in his eagerness to be out of the room and ran his thumb over the ridges.
William marked the presence of Adam Yqueboeuf and the brothers Thomas and Hugh de Coulances, whose strategy was to agree with everything that Henry said and butter him with flattery. The Young King was no fool, but his head was easily turned by praise and other men’s visions of the status he ought to command. “Your father thought long and hard about your coronation,” William remarked in a tone that was deliberately mild and conversational.
“He only did it because he was afraid of the country falling into anarchy if he should die suddenly. He wanted to secure the succession.”
William cocked an eyebrow. “Surely it is to your benefit as well as his?”
Henry scowled. “What use is a crown without the power behind it? He says I have to learn how to govern before he’ll slacken the reins, but how can I do that when he won’t give me the responsibility? When he was my age, he was leading armies!”
Henry had a point, William thought. The King desired him to be recognised as his heir, but refused to relinquish one iota of control to let him test his wings. At seventeen years old, Henry stood on the verge of manhood and it was dangerous to continue treating him as a juvenile.
